Hill Poll: Media Unethical, Biased Toward Democrats

Journalists who need an ego boost about their chosen profession as a lofty endeavor won’t like their reflection in a new poll from The Hill. Almost 70 percent of likely voters characterize the Fourth Estate as biased, and 57 percent contend that reporters are very unethical, or at least somewhat so.

What’s more, reporters’ Democratic slips are showing, with 46 percent of the 1,000 likely voters polled July 21 saying the media favor Democrats. Another 22 percent detect a Republican tilt, and 28 percent say the media porridge is just right.

And reporters are just too cozy with the politicians they cover, according to 44 percent of the poll participants, while 22 percent disagree. Men are much more inclined than women to cite the coochie-coo factor, with half of the male respondents saying they’re too close, compared with 38 percent of the female participants.

Regarding ethics, only 39 percent find the news media as somewhat or very ethical, according to the Hill, which notes that the Pulse Opinion Research poll was taken as the now-shuttered News of the World phone-hacking scandal continued to unfold in the United Kingdom and U.S. politicians have called for an investigation of parent News Corp.’s actions here.

The Hill’s analysis notes what it describes as “intriguing patterns” in the findings, in which centrists and liberals don’t use as broad a brush to paint the media, while conservatives take out their poison pens. One-third of moderates say the media report appropriately on politicians, while only 17 percent of conservatives hold that same opinion.

However, almost 40 percent of centrists detect a Democratic bias in the media, compared with only 19 percent toward Republicans.

Journalists who need an ego boost about their chosen profession as a lofty endeavor won t like their reflection in a new poll from The Hill. Almost 70 percent of likely voters characterize the Fourth Estate as biased, and 57 percent contend that reporters are very...